Research

I consider myself predominantly an OT (organizational theory) scholar; at the same time, I am very mindful of the implications of my work for other allied business fields–primarily entrepreneurship and strategic management–as well as sociology. I am less concerned with disciplinary boundaries than I am with uncovering theoretical mechanisms that are applicable across a wide variety of organizational settings.

At a general level, my research explores how social and cognitive processes inform the ways in which organizational fields and markets are structured. Within this broad area, I have so far focused my attention on four main topics: 1) the role that scandals and stigmatization processes play in organizational fields; 2) the strategic interaction between activists and firms; 3) the impact of social processes such as status, reputation, and networks on the success of new entrants in highly uncertain environments. In this regard, my work builds on, and speaks to, a broad literature spanning strategic management, organizational theory, and economic sociology.

In my research work, I had the chance to study a wide range of organizational forms, including electric utilities, social movement organizations, creative collectives such as music bands, Christian churches and high-tech startups. My methodological portfolio is similarly broad: while my work builds on basic and advanced multivariate statistics, I have also applied text analysis and network analysis, as well as more qualitative techniques such as interviews, discourse analysis of secondary data and historical analysis.